So, you want to set up a lighting situation in the comfort of your own home but you’re not quite sure where to begin. Well, it’s not too hard assuming you have the lighting equipment at hand or if you have enough friends to loan them to you. The first thing you want to remember is that light is your most important element when it comes to a photograph so don’t get frustrated when you don’t get it right the first time. We have all been there, it’s called trial and error. I personally went into this photo shoot ambivalent of all my light sources and how to balance them out. Trial and error. I walked out of there with this photograph.
(Victoria Zegler/Staff Photographer)
First things first, you want to clear your surroundings without clutter. Couches, tables, and boxes should be moved unless you want them in the frame as a prop. If you have a white wall in your home, that is your best option for your backdrop. Why? Well, walls and ceilings are good for bouncing light off of when using a strobe (otherwise known as a flash) and the color white doesn’t give you a tint to your subject. Whenever shooting with a strobe, it’s good to have a pocket notebook handy to bounce light off onto your subject. So what have we got so far? A camera, strobe, a subject and your backdrop (the wall). For our photo shoot, we had many different lamps illuminating our subject from many different angles.
In the tall lamps near our subject Ian’s face we had energy saving Halogen bulbs which lit up his face on both sides. Most of the desk lamps on the floor were fluorescent bulbs you can buy for $1.50 down the street. Each lamp was set up around Ian to illuminate him from every angle like a half circle, as you can see in the photograph. Once you have the lighting positioned the way you want it, the way it should look, turn you camera on to test it. You may notice it looks “hot,” meaning it has a yellow or orange tint to it from the heat of the lamps which needs to be toned down. Adjust your settings, starting with your ISO making sure it’s set properly. Next, your white balance which corresponds to the type of light being taken in by your camera needs to be set too, in our case fluorescent. After those are set you can start playing with your shutter speed and aperture settings to see where you need to be set for shooting. For Ian’s shoot, my settings were:
Model: NIKON D700
Focal Length: 35
ISO: 400
Aperture: 2.8
Shutter: 1/250
Program: Manual
White Bal.: Fluorescent
Are you still with me? Good. Once you have your camera set you can get your trigger finger ready and rarin’ to go. Don’t be afraid to work with angles, distance and not to mention...your subject! You may be behind a camera but you’re not invisible, communication is key! You’re creative so let it flow :) Share your ideas with your subject and have them share their ideas with you because in the end you both could walk out with awesome photographs.
NO SERIOUSLY...THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT...
Helping with photo shoots is a lot of fun. It’s just a lot of goofing off, messing around and eventually coming away with a front page image. There are a few things that, to me, are very important in photography. Knowing your equipment is one, the other is “seeing” with the equipment you have. So, we were illuminating Ian with various lamps (and a lantern for good measure), I was playing around with my girlfriend’s iPhone, specifically with the “Hipstamatic” application. This app allows you to select different “lenses”, “flashes” and “films” to add that vintage plastic/toy camera feel to an image. I’ve been playing around with this app for a while, so I’m starting to get the hang of what feel specific combimations create. As Victoria was snapping away, directing Ian to stand like this, or do that, I saw an image I thought would be pretty interesting.
(Sean Proctor/Assistant Photo Editor)
My “HipstaSettings” were:
Model: iPhone 3G
Lens: John S
Film: Kodot Verichrome
Flash: Standard
It ended up being a pretty cool shot. The lantern in front adds a dynamic to the image, which was funny to begin with, but now is paired with the ridiculousness of Hipstamtic app. I think the best part of it is that it shows that you can make a fun, cool, dynamic, or totally awesome image using whatever equipment you have on hand. You don’t need the latest, greatest, most expensive photo equipment...All you need is a camera. Sure, we could go into the technical aspects of it all (I’m not going to print this out to a wall size poster), but just take whatever you got and go out and shoot.
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